come back to haunt us , in newspaper headlines, as THF or CMB - one day
there will be other human cabbages and babies born without arms or legs.
She touched the other tubes. Arsenic, old-fashioned Agatha Christie
vintage poison. And then here is the real living and breathing bastard
daddy of them all - this is cadmium; as a sulphide so it's easily
absorbed. In 100 parts to the million it's as lethal as a neutron
bomb., While he watched, she carried the tray of tubes across to the
tanks and set the ECG monitors running. Each began to record the normal
double-peaked heart-beat of a healthy clam.
Now, she said, watch this. Under controlled conditions, she began to
drip the weak poisoned solutions into the reticulated water systems, a
different solution to each of the tanks.
These concentrations are so low that the animals will not even be aware
of trauma, they will continue to feed and breed without any but
long-term indications of systemic poisoning. Samantha was a different
person, a cool quick-thinking professional. Even the white dust-coat
that she had slipped over her tee-shirt altered her image and she had
aged twenty years in poise and authority as she passed back and forth
along the row of tanks.
There/ she said, with grim satisfaction as the stylus on one recording
drum made a slightly double beat at its peak and then just delectably
flattened the second peak.
Typical aromatic carbon reaction. The distorted heart-beat was repeated
endlessly on the slowly turning drum, and she passed on to the next
tank.
See the pulse in the trough, see the fractional speeding up of the heart
spasm' That's cadmium in ten parts to the million, at 100 parts it will
kill all sea life, at five hundred it will kill man slowly, at seven
hundred parts in air or solution it will kill him very quickly indeed.
Nicholas interest became total fascination, as he helped Samantha record
the experiments and control the flow and concentration in the tanks.
Slowly they the dosage of each substance and the moving stylus
dispassionately recorded the increasing distress and the final
convulsions and spasmodic throes that preceded death.
Nicholas voiced the tickle of horror and revulsion he felt at watching
the process of degeneration.
It's macabre. Yes . She stood back from the tanks. Death always is.
But these organisms have such rudimentary nervous systems that they
don't experience pain as we know it. She shuddered slightly herself and
went on. But imagine an entire ocean poisoned like one of these tanks,
imagine the incredible agonies of tens of millions of sea birds, of the
mammals, seals and porpoises and whales. Then think of what would
happen to man himself - Samantha shrugged off her white dust-coat.
Now I'm hungry, she announced, and then looking up at the fibreglass
panels in the roof, No wonder! It's dark already! While they cleaned
and tidied the laboratory, and made a last check of the pumps and
running equipment, Samantha told him, In five hours we have tested over
a hundred and fifty samples of contaminated water and got accurate
indications of nearly fifty dangerous substances - at a probable cost of
